Stunt Casting

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"Oh, Dom De Luise was there, too. He threw paper at the crowd for five seconds before disappearing completely. I've heard that this is exactly how he wanted his involvement in the parade worded in NBC's contract. Dom's a fucker."

Hiring of a big-name actor to play a supporting role (or even a leading role, but usually the former). The idea is usually that the actor's fame will draw in viewers, as it normally would if you put them prominently on the advertising; but you don't have to pay them as much if they only have to do a few days work.

In theatre productions that are especially Long-Runners, stunt casting is one way of keeping things fresh and interesting for potential audiences. The Broadway revival of Chicago has been especially egregious with this, cycling hundreds of celebrities of varying degrees of talent through the lead roles since it began its run in 1996.

It's also standard operating procedure in the U.K.-specific style of broad comic theatre known as Pantomime.note (which doesn't really expect you to be able to act, and if you can't do it well, you can always do it MORE!)

Fantasy Mission Force was advertised as "Starring Jacky Chan" despite the fact that Jackie Chan played a minor role. Jackie reportedly appeared in it only because he owed a favor to the lead actor, Jimmy Wang Chu (who was rumored to have ties to organized crime syndicates).

Jackie's done it more than once; he appeared in Stephen Chow's King of Comedy as a nameless stuntman, and in Sammo Hung's Martial Law as a perp, the latter done to return the favor for Hung playing the put-upon biker in Mr Nice Guy.

Marlon Brando as Jor-El in the first Superman film. He actually got top billing (and a star's wages) on that movie for several scenes that barely totaled thirty minutes in an almost two-and-a-half hour movie. He was cast in the role specifically so they could have a big name actor headlining in order to draw the audience.

Indeed, the term "Brando Acceptibilty Yardstick" was coined by a reader as an entry in Roger Ebert's Little Movie Glossary in reference to this. Brando essentially made it okay for mega-stars to do comic book films - and like him, be paid extraordinarily well for it. Like him, they often don't play the lead roles (which are often given to up-and-comers); they usually play mentors (like Brando) or villains. The best known example of the latter might be Jack Nicholson being hired to play the Joker in 1989's Batman; he got top billing and a giant cut of the film's profits and merchandising revenue. The three sequels basically stunt cast all the major villains as a response to how well this worked, culminating in the disaster of Batman & Robin (Arnold Schwarzenegger as Mr. Freeze and Uma Thurman as Poison Ivy), while Batman himself was given The Other Darrin treatment.

Geoffrey Rush gets third billing in Intolerable Cruelty for a character seen a grand total of three times, for maybe two minutes of screen time, whom an audience member might easily mistake for three separate characters on the first viewing.

Much was made of Drew Barrymore appearing in the first Scream movie (top billing, appearing on the poster and other promotional materials) despite the fact that she is killed off in the first scene.

However, she was wanted for a larger role, but was unable to do so due to other movies she was starring in - so instead, they opted to give her the Psycho treatment.

In one very disturbing example, Pink Floyd - The Wall uses actual Neo-Nazi Skinheads during the "Run Like Hell" scene, where Pink's Neo-Nazi followers destroy an Indian-owned cafe and assault an interracial couple.

Time Bandits: The Greek warrior fighting the Minotaur turns out to be... Sean Connery! As King Agamemnon, he has only a few minutes of screentime. Amusingly, the script describes the character as someone who looks like Sean Connery, but to everyone's surprise the man himself accepted the small role.

The Meteor Man figures James Earl Jones, Bill Cosby (who has no lines), Marla Gibbs and Sinbad. Gibbs has the biggest role, as she plays the protagonist's mother. Also from the music industry, there's Luther Vandross (also no lines), Big Daddy Kane, Another Bad Creation, Cypress Hill, Naughty By Nature and jazz singer Nancy Wilson.

Fan Bingbing in Iron Man 3. Not only does she only appear in the Chinese cut of the movie, but she doesn't even get a name despite being featured in the Chinese trailers!

Similar to Fan Bingbing, Zhang Jingchu was given prominent billing in Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation despite only appearing in the background in one scene and having a few lines in another. Her role, in fact, is so superfluous it could have been played by just about anyone.

Popular comic actor, voice actor and singer Jon Pertwee as the Doctor. Overlaps slightly with Playing Against Type as he was the first actor to play the Doctor with his own natural personality, avoiding the over-the-top character acting associated both with the Doctor role until then and Pertwee's typical roles. Note that three out of four stories in his first season contain short gratuitous sequences of the Doctor singing a funny song in a silly voice, intended as fanservice for those who wanted to see the Doctor being played as a typical Jon Pertwee comic character.

When John Nathan-Turner was producer during the 1980s, Doctor Who had a habit of using this trope; however, whereas most of the modern attempts to do this at least try to match the character to a vaguely appropriate character, many of the earlier efforts ended up being spectacularly miscast, resulting in some truly "What the Hell?" Casting:

For example, Beryl Reid as Ellen Ripley-esque space freighter captain in "Earthshock", a role that was... not quite what you'd expect to see Beryl Reid playing.

"Warriors of the Deep" cast Hammer Horror veteran Ingrid Pitt as Doctor Solow. Her appearance in that story is mostly memorable due to her character's death scene being one of the show's most embarrassing moments.

1950-1960s Broadway star Dolores Gray shows up in the middle of "Silver Nemesis" as Mrs. Remington, a wealthy American lady. She's not exactly miscast; the "What the Hell" factor comes from the fact that there is literally no point whatsoever to her being there. She shows up, gives two of the characters a lift somewhere, and buggers off again. It's also a bit of a "What the Hell" moment in that it seems to have been intended as a Stunt Casting moment despite the fact that relatively few of the watching audience would actually have any idea who she even was.

Comedians Hale and Pace feature prominently in "Survival" as staff in a corner shop.

Nicholas Parsons, best known as a game show host, proved to be a mixed blessing in "The Curse of Fenric". On the one hand, he played his part of a vicar suffering a crisis of faith quite superbly. On the other hand, because he was such a rare example of piece of stunt-casting actually working, a number of plot-important scenes he wasn't in ended up on the cutting-room floor.

Eric Roberts as the Master in the TV movie. This was actually a compromise, with the original idea being to stunt-cast the Doctor himself. Although Paul McGann was the first choice of producer Philip Segal and director Geoffrey Sax, executives at Fox wanted a well-known American actor in order to draw in ratings—with Tom Hanks, Harrison Ford, and Jim Carrey being among the names thrown around. Eventually, Fox agreed to cast McGann under the condition that a name actor play the Master instead.

Stunt Cast actors in revival Doctor Who are not usually heavyweight actors, but are well-known soap actors, comedians, quiz show hosts and other more minor celebrities. Oh, and Sir Derek Jacobi.

This was the reason why Nardole was included in season 10 as a full-time companion. Matt Lucas of Little Britain and Alice in Wonderland fame first appeared in "The Husbands of River Song" as a supporting character. A big fan of the show, Lucas begged Steven Moffat to bring him back in any shape or form, so Moffat decided to make him a regular as he was surprised that someone who lived in LA would want to work on Doctor Who.

Sir David Jason was cast as Death's manservant Albert in the Made-for-TV Movie of the Literature/Discworld novel "Hogfather". In the UK, this resulted in the film being promoted as though he were the main character, rather than the mostly-unknown actress playing the heroine.

Britney Spears in How I Met Your Mother is a prime example. For two episodes, no less. The show does this a LOT, though, and Britney just got the most hype about it. Her appearance drew in such good ratings, it may have saved the show from cancellation in its third season.

Since Neil Patrick Harris publicly frowned on the practice, it's become much less common though.

SCTV, against their wishes, had special guest actors Sir John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson. In his book on the series (titled, appropriately enough, SCTV), Dave Thomas said they were both extremely difficult to work with and did not understand their brand of comedy. Later on, they welcomed Bill Murray to guest star, who was an active booster of the show. Notable musical guests, who also acted on the show, ranged from Hall and Oates, Dr. John, Wendy O. Williams & the Plasmatics, The Boomtown Rats, Tony Bennett, Roy Orbison, Talking Heads, Jimmy Buffett, John Mellencamp (when he was still John Cougar), America, Joe Walsh, Dave's brother Ian Thomas (who was semi-successful in the late '70s with his song "Painted Ladies", and would go on to play Dougie Franklin on The Red Green Show, on which Dave guest-starred as his brother Ben Franklin), and classical violinist Eugene Fodor.

NBC's Chuck started doing this heavily in season 2, though season 1 had its moments. Some, like Scott Bakula and Jordana Brewster appeared in multiple episodes, while others, like Robert Picardo and Fred Savage, were only in one. Granted some NBC shows have been known to do this, but Chuck also tends to lampshade it with the actors referencing their famous roles, such as Bakula uttering, "Oh boy."

Often, the recognition of the unsubs (generally played by supremely benign actors, when this trope is in play) only serves to make the roles creepier, or more tragic. James Van Der Beek's character is a good example of that, as is Frankie Muniz's.

In general, stunt casting in a legal or cop drama always brings Narrowed It Down to the Guy I Recognize into play (whether straight or subverted). CM usually averts this by having the unsub commit his crimes onscreen in full view of the audience. "Paradise", in turn is an exception to this rule, where we don't see the unsub actually commit a crime until after they find out who it is...thus playing Narrowed straight (Wil Wheaton played the unsub in the ep.)

The fans have become critical of this method of casting guest stars as unsubs, even when they are good, because it had been used too often during a weak seventh season. They feel that guest-star unsubs are showcased to the expense of the original cast and story suspense (by showing the unsubs's from the very beginning of the episode, rather than keeping them obscured). By giving more time to the unsubs and their evil deeds, it makes the profiler characters look like stupid slow-pokes, and possibly glorifying the serial killers (which is NOT the point of the show).

Big Brother 13 brings back three "Dynamic duos". It becomes pretty obvious that they just set it up so that one of the six returnees would win, given how, when it was reduced to two, a mysterious stroke of luck bailed them out.

When the 60s' Batman took off, all of a sudden many big name actors who normally wouldn't do television wanted a chance to play a Bat-villain. The second season especially is loaded with this, name actors playing one-shot villains created just for them, with the network playing up the guest-villain bit. Among these performers were Art Carney, Shelley Winters, Van Johnson, Liberace, Michael Rennie, Tallulah Bankhead, Zsa Zsa Gabor, Otto Preminger... and many more.

Most Game Shows tend to do this in the form of "Celebrity Editions" in their waning years in a last-ditch effort to round up some bonus viewers before they inevitably sink into the drain. Most notable are Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and The Weakest Link, whose final primetime seasons were almost nothing but celebrity editions.

Averted: When Margaret Hamilton (the Wicked Witch in Wizard of Oz) played Morticia's mother in the 1960s The Addams Family series, the network did not exploit the connection—appropriate though it was.

CSI occasionally seemed to do this, but for the most part their "stunt casting" was the result of a working character actor who had some notoriety at the time (like Alan Tudyk or Wil Wheaton) just happening to landing a role on the series. The one time they did intentionally Stunt-Cast, it worked spectacularly as the legendary Ned Beatty was cast as the kindly pediatric dentist Doctor Dave... who was also a creepifyingly kind serial killer.

Executives loved the first season of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, but it was a complete flop in the ratings. They greenlit the show for a second season on the condition that they hired a famous actor to bring more attention to the show. They ultimately landed on Danny DeVito, introducing him into the main cast as the deadbeat parent of Dennis and Sweet Dee. It worked incrediblywell, turning the show into a big hit with both audiences and critics.

Even more blatant was getting Satomi Sato, fresh off her success of voicing Ritsu in K-On! to voice Dende's brother Cargo... for maybe one or two lines before he gets killed.

The original version of Dragon Ball Z has been guilty of this as well. One episode during the Buu saga features Majin Buu befriending and helping a blind boy who was a one shot character. Said one-shot was voiced by Megumi Hayashibara.note In case you're wondering, in the Kai cut he's instead voice by Houko Kuwashima.

Funimation once considered casting Freddie Prinze Jr as a role in DBZ, presumably Teen Gohan. Seriously!

They finally did get to work with him for the Mass Effect movie in 2012, but only to reprise a role he had previously played in the games.

Later on, with Dragon Ball Super, they cast Brian Drummond (who played Vegeta in the original Saban dub of DBZ) as Copy Vegeta; plenty of fans suspected that they would have hired Lanipator for the role if not for the fact that Toei had apparently ordered Funimation not to hire TFS members.

Similarly, Aya Hirano was also cast as Shinobu the vampire in Bakemonogatari even though Shinobu never spoke a single word in the entire series. It must be noted, however, that with the recently announced prequel anime, maybe this was a case of extreme foresight in the case of the casting company.

The Simpsons features a "special guest star" — who isn't even always an actor — almost every episode nowadays, and of course most of the promo is devoted to their part, however small it might be. (Example: "Elementary School Musical" had a lot of emphasis placed on the appearances of three of the cast of Glee (Lea Michele, Cory Monteith and Amber Riley, if you're wondering) while - at least in the UK - pretty much ignoring the stars of Flight of the Conchords, whose roles were much more important to the episode.)

This wound up biting Universal Studios in the butt when they released The Jetsons The Movie. Janet Waldo had returned to voice Judy Jetson. However, after she had finished recording all her lines, the execs decided to replace her in favor of the pop star Tiffany, in an attempt to try an attract a younger audience. The move caused a major backlash, and casting director Andrea Romano asked to have her name removed from the credits to avoid hate mail. To make matters worse, by the time the movie was finally released, Tiffany's fifteen minutes had long since ended.

Blake Lewis as Kasuka in one episode Durarara!!. He was cast because he was an American Idol runner-up, a huge anime fan, and wanted a shot at voice acting in one. When it came time to record Season 2, he was set to reprise his role (which was bigger this time), and even recorded some of the episodes, but was replaced at the last minute with Vic Mignogna, supposedly because he spilled the beans on Twitter before the dub was announced.

Kimberly J Brown from Halloweentown did the voice of Miyu in the first 7 episodes of Vampire Princess Miyu before being replaced with Dorothy Fahn for the remaining 19 episodes for unknown reasons. Averted with Emmanuelle Chriqui as Hisae since the dub was actually done before she made it big with Entourage.

Arguably with Stephanie Griffin as Yukari. She wasn't a celebrity, but it looks like she was only given a role because she voiced lead Himeko Se in AnimEigo's dub of the original OVA.

Ed Asner as Grandpa Ayanokiji and William Katt as Tinzin in 3×3 Eyes. Arguably with Brigitte Bako and Christian Cambell as the leads. The dub's voice director was Greg Weisman, who was working on Gargoyles at the time, and cast many of the same actors in the dub.

Interesting point about Sir David Attenborough's documentaries. In the UK he is nearly synonymous with good quality and he has been producing, commissioning and writing for natural history documentaries for decades and is widely knowledgable about his subject and a driving force on all his projects (and was knighted for it). Outside the UK, maybe Canada, not so much thus his replacement narrators in other territories tend to be big entertainment names.

Life got narration by Oprah Winfrey in the US.

Sigourney Weaver, as a more familiar face of conservation work, was brought in on Planet Earth

The 1996 revival of Chicago is a notorious example — still running in The New '10s, its longevity is partially due to casting numerous well-known actors and actresses (and, occasionally, rock/pop/country singers) in all three of its principal roles.

The '90s revival of Grease was also notorious for this. (Seriously, Rosie O'Donnell as Rizzo?) And it's rare to see a professional production of the show that doesn't stunt cast the One-Scene Wonder Teen Angel, who sings "Beauty School Dropout" (for which the movie got Frankie Avalon).

The 2007 Las Vegas staging of The Producers cast David Hasselhoff as Roger De Bris, the Flamboyant Gay director, and gave him top billing. At the same time, this particular production was Recut to only 90 minutes, so to maximize Hasselhoff's stage time, most of the romantic subplot involving Leo and Ulla was cut...which made his betrayal of Max harder to swallow. Later in the run, Tony Danza came in to play Max (he was previously one of Creator/Nathan ane's replacements in the New York production).

Hasselhoff had previously become a bit infamous for playing the title roles in the musical Jekyll & Hyde on Broadway, and one performance was filmed and released on video and DVD. That production frequently stunt cast the lead role; Sebastian Bach played him for a while as well.

Toward the end of its run, the Toronto production of The Phantom of the Opera cast Paul Stanley as the Phantom. He was generally well-received and even got some KISS fans interested in musical theatre. While Phantom has generally avoided this, it did bring back Michael Crawford to the role for a brief time on Broadway, Robert Guillame was the first-ever black Phantom in the national touring company, and equally well-known Norm Lewis became the first black actor to play the title role in the Broadway production in 2014.

During its final year on Broadway, Aida cast well known R&B stars in the title role, such as Toni Braxton, Deborah Cox and Michelle Williams. While this usually paid off in singing ability, the acting sometimes left a lot to be desired.

Seussical was a Troubled Production and over its brief 198-performance run on Broadway did this several times in a desperate attempt to drum up business — both Rosie O'Donnell and Cathy Rigby (a former Olympian and highly-regarded stage Peter Pan) played The Cat in the Hat even though that's a male character, and country music child star Billy Gillman played Jojo for a time.

Theatre critic Mark Shenton praised the 2013 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory musical in the West End for avoiding this trope with regards to the showy role of Willy Wonka. Instead, the role was originated by Douglas Hodge and after a year, handed off to Alex Jennings — both are highly-regarded English stage actors, but subject to Pop-Culture Isolation by the world at large. The following year, Jennings was succeeded by Jonathan Slinger, who also fits the "high-quality resume/not a big name" pattern.

The 2013 Broadway adaptation of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Cinderella did this in 2014 when it brought in pop singer Carly Rae Jepsen to play the title character and Fran Drescher to play the evil stepmother. Jepsen's successor to the role was KekePalmer, who also fits this trope for what it's worth.

Forbidden Broadway loves to mock this concept, most recently in its 2014 edition by bringing up the aforementioned Cinderella recasting.

Sometimes happens with La Cage aux folles with regard to the role of Albin/Zaza — talk show host Graham Norton was a replacement in the 2008 West End revival. After it transferred to Broadway the show's book writer, Harvey Fierstein, played the role for a time (both actors took over from Douglas Hodge). For the follow-up U.S. tour, Fierstein was approached to play Georges, which would have made him the rare actor to have played both lead roles, but he was too busy with other projects.

The 1930 St. Louis Municipal Opera production somehow was able to cast W.C. Fields as Captain Andy.

The 1994 Broadway revival inflated the role of Parthy and gave it to Elaine Stritch.

The 1981 regional production of Pippin that was filmed for television included Chita Rivera as Fastrada and Martha Raye as Berthe.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats has always gone for big names when casting Grizabella, the female lead and star of the show, most recently casting Delta Goodrem, Nicole Scherzinger and Leona Lewis in the role.

Sara Bareilles, who wrote the songs for the musical version of Waitress, spent six weeks starring in the show.

Video Games

Exaggerated with the PlayStation game Apocalypse by Activision. The original concept was that Bruce Willis would've voiced an A.I.-controlled partner who assists the player throughout the game. The developers decided to ditch the original protagonist and simply turned Willis' character into the player character with the rationale "why would anyone want to be Bruce Willis' sidekick when they can be the man himself."

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